The wind carried our breath away.
I pressed my forehead to his.
“Everything has.”
His energy vanished soon after.
I saw it in the delay before he answered a question and the way his right eyelid lowered faster than the left.
We packed without discussion.
At the car, he accepted help instead of arguing.
He slept before we reached the first coastal turn.
Chapter 21
REID
The outing punished Noah for every minute he had enjoyed it.
By the time I got him upstairs, pain had narrowed his world to darkness, stillness, and keeping one eye closed. He went directly to the couch, lowered the shades until the harbor disappeared behind gray fabric, and curled on his right side beneath the knitted blanket.
Marlowe pressed against his shins as though his old body could contain the pain for him.
I brought water and the as-needed medication Maeve had told us to use on days like this.
The television remained dark.
Even the weak evening light leaking around the shades seemed too sharp.
“Would the bedroom be quieter?” I asked.
“No.”
“A cold cloth?”
He swallowed the tablets, then let his head sink back against the cushion. “Maybe.”
I dampened a cloth beneath the kitchen tap, wrung out the excess, and laid it carefully across his forehead.
His right hand closed around my wrist before I could withdraw.
“Stay.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“Here.”
The word came out rough and small.
I lowered myself to the floor beside the couch.
Noah kept his fingers around my wrist. His grip was not strong, but it remained deliberate, as if he needed the proof of my pulse beneath his thumb.
The word we had given each other that morning had not softened his headache.
It had not repaired his memory or restored the strength the accident had taken.
